


Chalk it up to Something Supernatural

by caprigender



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Description of reader character is pretty gender neutral, Masturbation, Other, Reader Insert, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:00:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,505
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23452867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/caprigender/pseuds/caprigender
Summary: Elias likes to keep an eye on potential avatars, just for a bit of fun. Some turn out to be more fun to watch than others.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Reader
Comments: 5
Kudos: 132





	Chalk it up to Something Supernatural

**Author's Note:**

> this is titled “I have horrible taste” in my google drive lol
> 
> If I was smarter I would wait to post this until hype for the season start died down but instead I am a validation gremlin with no impulse control so

It was chalkboard paint. You painted all the walls of your room with chalkboard paint.

That was certainly a new concept in terms of conspiracy boards: entire bedroom walls covered with frantic scribbling that could be erased and rewritten to suit the fixation of the day. It also explained why Elias’ view of the room kept shifting. Chalk-scratched viewports with dusty fingerprint smudges blurring the edges were never in short supply, but they came and went like the theories, the flow charts, and the vague, nonsensical maps. Nothing ever stayed in one place for too long on this strange shifting landscape, but the eyes always came back. You seemed to have a certain fixation with them.

He didn’t know where you lived, not exactly. He made a very concentrated effort not to know too much about the mundane details of your situation. You weren’t under his jurisdiction, that much was obvious, and he didn’t want to bring you to the Beholding organization of your nearest convenience. Sure they were all loosely affiliated and sure they all had the same mission statement but that mission statement did include keeping secrets and holding back information. Besides, he wanted to see if you would come to the Eye all on your own.

Elias thought it was entirely possible, if some other entity didn’t snatch you up first. That was always the risk with Beholding potentials, they were always too curious for their own good. Too much snooping, too much questioning, too much digging into things that were better left alone, sooner or later it got them killed or it got them Changed. You hadn’t been killed, not yet, but you were beginning to Notice things.

You Noticed him. He could see it happen as he watched you. The way you hesitated, a specific change in body posture that broadcast clear as day the uncomfortable knowledge creeping up from your gut, spreading out from your spine, prickling in through your fingertips. You Knew when you were being Watched. You pretended to ignore it, but after so much time watching you it was obvious, embarrassingly obvious. You’d have to work on your poker face if you wanted to get anywhere in the Watcher’s good graces. You’d have to learn to better keep the secrets of your discomfort. But until then, it was absolutely delicious to watch the moment of realization and the way it made you squirm.

It wasn’t a linear progression. Sometimes you would notice his gaze immediately. Sometimes it would take hours. Sometimes you stumbled into your empty room late at night, almost dead on your feet, scrawled a mess of incoherent nonsense on the wall and passed out, never realizing you had company. Sometimes you would startle awake in the middle of the night, as if the weight of his gaze had grabbed you by the shoulders and pulled you up. Sometimes you sat on your bed eating cup noodles in your underwear until you felt the prickling of Eyes on you. Sometimes you would toss on a robe and sometimes you would just wipe the mess from the corner of your mouth as if your table manners were all you had to be embarrassed for. Sometimes you pressed a pillow between your legs and pushed your hips against it in long, slow strokes. Sometimes you wouldn’t be too distracted by this to notice when he was watching. Sometimes when you noticed you would even stop. Sometimes.

Sometimes you would slip a hand down between your legs under the covers. He couldn’t see the exact workings of your fingers, where they stroked and circled, if they pressed inside. Instead he saw the way your breath hitched, the soft contortions of your face, drawn and focused. It was calm and quiet and there was an honesty in it that was enticing.

He wouldn’t touch himself while he watched. Something about that would be admitting too much influence. If fucking your own hands while connected to someone miles away through chalk drawings and fear magic could be honest then he wanted no part of that honesty to be his. His body ached with its own desires while he settled smugly into his own satisfaction, secure in this power dynamic of his own design. His heart raced and he had to force his breathing to stay even but staying in control was a thrill all its own after all. He liked to be in control.

-

You stumbled in sometime in the morning, shaking and exhausted and absolutely filthy. A few haphazard strokes of your sleeve obliterated a few charts and a carefully drawn venn diagram that was only half wrong. So much for that. The eyes remained, from all angles he saw you begin tracing… something. You began calmly. Your face creased in quiet concentration, drawn and focused. But whatever you had encountered It Was Not What It Was and your sketching became frantic, unreadable. Lines over lines smudged by the way you rested your hand against the wall. You drew something and when it didn’t make sense you erased it, paced the room and drew it again. It didn’t make sense. You erased it, traced your steps again. No no luck there, it was all still nonsense. You wiped furiously at the wall, your sleeves covered in dust. Tried again. Tried again. Had to wrap your head around angles that didn’t quite work. The chalk broke. You tossed it across the room and collapsed on your bed in frustration.

Elias sighed in contentment. He wondered how long it would take before you got up. How long before you were scrabbling on the floor for the broken chalk? How long before you would be back to drawing fractal maps and pathways that didn’t make sense? How long before you were claimed and taken away? 

You wrapped your face with your hands and let out a soft moan of frustration that sent a twinge of something racing down his spine. Your fingers moved to drag down over your chest, your stomach, your hips. You unbuttoned your jeans and stripped off your shirt in a flurry of motion. The bed sighed with your second collapse that day, all rustling fabric and groaning bed springs. You lay there, semi obscured by covers and clothes with your hand making smooth repetitive motions down the front of your pants, like you were still following fractals even then.

Elias leaned back in his chair, almost mirroring you with his head tipped back and his hands resting lightly in his lap. A small whisper in the back of his mind coaxed him to unbutton, slip his hand through folds of fabric and find his own relief. He considered it.

Your chest heaved, exposed and uncovered without a shirt or blankets. His eyes traced your lines from every angle. How kind of you to provide him so many ways to see you come undone. How very thoughtful. He imagined following those lines with his hands. Just the tips of his fingers, lightly trailing across your skin until you cried out in frustration again and begged him to press harder. He wouldn’t of course. Though he wanted to do more, wanted to lean down and discover what you tasted like. Well, quite a few miles prevented him from indulging in that brand of ridiculousness anyway.

He watched the movement build in your body. The slight twitching and the growing tension. Your head turned toward an eye closer to your bed and he could see the detail of your lips parted with heavy breathing. He felt his own breath catch in his throat. Your hips lifted slightly off the bed and moved to press against your hand. His knuckles were tight against his leg. He consciously flexed his grip, relaxed, moved to press his palm against himself ever so lightly. Just a little bit, he could relax his own rules just a little bit.

Your eyes snapped open, focused and intense. They fixed on that single chalk outline of an eye and suddenly Elias could feel the weight of your stare, the weight of your gaze. In that moment you looked and you Saw something. A jolt of that power coursed through him and he froze, stomach churning in surprise and exhilaration. You gasped and your body shook through its release. And all the while your eyes burned through your wall, directly into him. 

You stared for what felt like an eternity. Sparking, fizzing confusion and desire and yearning, not for anything physical but for answers, crackled across the tenuous link and burned out. Your eyes closed and you sagged back into the mattress, exhausted again.

He was breathing heavier than he should have been. The subtle ecstasy of being Seen dying away to reveal some unfortunate realizations. He’d been careless. It wasn’t a large slip but this was now a factor he could not afford to indulge with indifference.

Elias noticed his hand still pressed between his legs. He took a breath, reached up and loosened his tie instead.


End file.
